Games are fantastic. A great way to use up spare time (if you’re lucky enough to have any), with fun challenges and in recent years more interesting and engrossing stories.
However, there are a number of things that happen fairly often in games that simply don’t make sense, yet we all just let it fly, usually in the name of allowing the game to play in an enjoyable way when realism might ruin it.
Here are some examples.
“You’re the best at what you do, but we still feel the need to give you step by step instructions”
This isn’t referring to command telling you where you need to go and how to achieve your goals. This is more about how someone at the start of a game will always give you instructions on how to walk and use a gun.
“Hey there! Use the left stick to move, right stick to look around and press R1 to fire your weapon.”
While your character wonders what any of this means as they use their feet to walk, neck to look around and trigger to shoot.
Death when Bumping into Enemies
When was the last time anyone died from simply knocking into someone? The worst that usually comes of it is that you have to grunt a little ‘sorry’ to acknowledge the mistake, yet not commit to the idea of it being entirely your fault.
This happens a lot less in games nowadays to be fair, but in gaming days of olde, super heroes like Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog and Crash Bandicoot, despite having the ability to destroy crates with their heads, could not survive tripping over a turtle.
“We’re at War, but a round of golf, Go-karting or tennis isn’t out of the question”
Another thing these characters are regularly guilty of is putting aside their differences with World threatening enemies to have a little game in a sports arena. Quite often they will even play on the same team!
Let’s try and forget the silliness of ‘Crash Bash’ where Aku Aku and Uka Uka agreed that Tiny Tiger and Dingodile could join the good guys to make the teams fair…
Context Sensitive Resilience
Your man might run around the battlefield able to take about ten hits from a rocket launcher before dying and similarly dishing out a similar amount of damage to his foes, but when it comes to an uncontrolled cutscene, one bullet can end a life.
Where did their super strength go? Or heavy armour or whatever it was that was keeping them from death before? That fully upgraded health bar with hundreds of hitpoints gets conveniently ignored when the story calls for it!
Wound Healing
On the subject of damage and hitpoints, games often would have us believe that healing critical wounds is a lot easier than real life proves.
Your soldier could be shot to shreds by a hail of bullets or sword swipes, but it’s ok. All they need to do is crouch behind a wall for four seconds and they’ll be right as rain.
Failing that, why not eat a pizza? Or if there aren’t any pizzas around, why not pick up a floating disembodied heart and pocket it? Far more effective than traditional medicine.
But then, even traditional medicine gets a strange representation. Your guy might have a first aid kit on him, but it takes a second for it to be used and him to be fighting fit again, no matter what injury was sustained.
Master Lock Impenetrable To Master Thieves
A lot of games include locked doors that may be picked, or computer systems that can be hacked.
Your character might have to learn this skill and improve to an expert standard like in Fallout, or be that talented from the start.
No matter, either way there will still be doors that are locked in such a way that no matter how skilled a hacker is, they will not be able to get through it.
Why not lock all doors this way if the tech is available? And why did you put that most valuable item you were hoping to keep out of your enemies hands in a room locked by conventional means?
One ring, ten fingers
If I were a fantasy adventurer in a world where magic rings could grant me bonus powers and strength, I would totally have one on every finger, maybe even two on each.
Why is it that our heroes can only wear one (or sometimes two). Also, why does wearing a ring disallow the ability to wear a necklace or amulet? They’re totally separate from each other!
In XCOM, your squaddies are unable to carry grenades if they put on a vest. Where is the sense in that?
Hey, I just shot 100 bad guys. I’ve suddenly learned a new move!”
Levelling up is an odd thing. Your character goes on missions, fights bad guys and so on and earns experience. Then all of a sudden they know a new power or special move.
No teacher came and taught them, they never practiced it, but now they are a master of some previously unseen ability.
Mission Complete = Loose Ends Tied Up
You may have been in deep trouble a few moments ago, but don’t worry! A big symbol reading ‘Mission Complete’ just appeared in front of you. That means everything is fine now! All the bad guys will go away.
In GTA games, a complete mission means that the police will drop all charges against you because… I don’t know. “Oh no! He’s in his house! We can’t go in there without an invitation! Let’s call the whole thing off.”
In some games, a dying team mate might be revived before their last breath by that ‘Mission Complete’ rather than being conventionally treated by medicine (or a cheeseburger).
First Person Peripheral Vision
All right. This one might be a bit nitpicky, but the idea of first person games is that you are looking through the eyes of your playable character.
Unfortunately, due to TV screens being rectangles, we always get a view that doesn’t accurately represent the way normal people see.
People see in more of a wide cone shape allowing for things in the corner of your eye to be noticed.
In these first person games, if an enemy is not directly in front of you, then you can’t see them. It’s an irritating flaw that games nowadays try to address by having arrows pop up should you be attacked from the side or back, but a reason why I will always prefer a third person view.
I can carry a large amount of weapons, but only one of each kind!
Similar to the one ring point I suppose, but isn’t it strange how some game characters are able to carry a rocket launcher, a rifle, a pistol, a submachine gun and a few grenades, but they aren’t able to trade the rocket launcher for a shotgun?
It weighs less and takes up a little less room in those deep pockets so why not?
GTA again is an offender of this. You can carry a rocket launcher and a rifle, but you can’t have a rocket launcher and a flamethrower.
I guess this is mainly so you can be tactical with your play style and have to pick and choose what you wield and conserve ammo rather than having it all too easy. But it is annoying. If the game logic is that this guy is strong enough to carry the contents of an armoury, he should be able to take what he wants.
But then who in the world is able to carry that amount of weapons? And where is he storing them!?
